Alicante - Torrevieja airport bus service to be extended fo 6 months
Friday, October 28, 2011 @ 7:51 PM
The bus service linking Torrevieja with the airport at El Altet, Alicante is to be extended for another six months as from the end of last month. This will enable the company that is running the service to assess what the demand from passengers is like during the winter months in addition to the experience they have already gained over the summer period this year. The service began at the end of May and passengers were unhappy when they learnt that it was for a trial period only to the end of September.
The coach service runs on a direct route between the airport and Torrevieja bus station every two hours with the last trip leaving El Altet at 10.00 pm. The cost of a ticket is only €6.70 but the results so far in terms of passenger demand have not been encouraging. There are 16 trips per day, eight from Torrevieja and eight return trips from the airport and according to reports there have been around 100 passengers in total per day although on some days there has been a peak of 150. At the rate of 100 per day that equates to a little over six people per journey on a bus that is capable of carrying 50 passengers.
It has been suggested that to make it more profitable it may be necessary to reduce the frequency of buses and have the bus stop at other places perhaps even going on to Orihuela Costa after Torrevieja. As it is at the moment many passengers arriving from the airport at the bus station in Torrevieja then get into taxis to take them to their final destination. The initial forecast from Costa Azul, the coach company that has the present concession for the airport run, was that the service would have 100 thousand passengers per annum.
The current figures of 100 per day if repeated throughout the year would equate to a demand of a little over 36 thousand, well short of the company’s initial target. A further glitch in attracting people to the service may be Ryanair’s avowed intent to significantly reduce its flights out of Alicante during the winter months over a dispute with the airport involving the use of airbridges to embark and disembark passengers.
Source: Coastrider